Otozo Yamada

Otozo Yamada (6 November 1881-18 July 1965) was a General in the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II.

Biography
Otozo Yamada was born on 6 November 1881 in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. He served as a cavalry officer of the Imperial Japanese Army, and he was promoted to Major-General in 1930, when he became Commandant of the Cavalry School. In 1937, he gained a field command as the commander of the IJA 12th Division in Manchukuo, and he later led the Japanese Third Army and Central China Expeditionary Army. In August 1940, he was promoted to full General, and he was made Inspector-General of Military Training, serving in this post until 1944. In July 1944, he became the final commander-in-chief of the Kwantung Army, and his makeshift forces were scattered by the Soviet Union's Red Army in just a few days in August 1945 when the Russians invaded Manchuria. He was sentenced to 25 years in a Soviet labor camp for war crimes, but he was released in 1956, and he died in Japan in 1965.